Laura Lee Guhrke (35 page)

“Hey, Mick,” a voice interrupted from another table, and Mick turned to see Sergeant Lloyd MacNeil, one of the men from that morning’s meeting. “When is that Haversham woman going to look into her crystal ball and tell us who killed Jack and Richard?”

“Forget about that,” said the other sergeant seated at MacNeil’s table. “Why didn’t she get out her tarot cards? She could have told our fortunes today.”

“I’d rather have her hold my hand and read my palm,” MacNeil said, laughing. “She’s a pretty, long-legged bit of skirt, I’ll say that.”

Mick was on his feet in an instant, but he barely took one step toward the other table before Billy and Rob grabbed him by the arms to hold him back.

“Hey, now, ease off, lad,” Billy muttered close to his ear. “They’re only having you on.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Micky boy,” Rob said. “Let it go.”

Mick knew his friends were right. He took a deep breath and nodded, forcing his rage down. When Billy and Rob relaxed their grip, he jerked free and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. “I’m leaving,” he said and picked up his pint.

“Aye,” Billy and Rob said at the same time, “Sophie’s the one.”

Mick didn’t bother to reply. He turned away and headed for the door, passing the table of Sergeant MacNeil and the other man who’d been ridiculing Sophie. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t take a swing at either of them. But he did take a great deal of satisfaction in dumping his ale over MacNeil’s head as he walked by.

Nineteen
 

Sophie woke from a deep sleep, gasping for breath as she sat up. Beside her, the lamp was burning, and she could feel the coolness of a breeze through the doors opening onto her balcony. It was a dream. Mick was not dead. Yet.

She hugged her pillow tight, shivering as if she were cold. She began taking slow, deep breaths, pushing her dream of Mick’s funeral away, trying not to think of it as a premonition, trying to force aside the fear that he was lying dead somewhere, trying to overcome the panic that made her chest ache as if she’d been running. Mick was not going to die, she told herself over and over.

Yet she couldn’t stop shivering. Sophie got out of bed, picked up the lamp from her bedside, and left her bedroom. She walked several steps down the hall to
Mick’s door, and, as quietly as possible, she opened it. He was in bed, sound asleep.

Sophie closed the door and drew a deep, steadying breath. She stood there for a long moment, waiting for the horror of her dream to fade away, telling herself Mick was alive, he was safe.

She returned to her room and did what she always did after a dream. She sat down with quill, ink, and paper, and she wrote down as much as she could remember.

It had never been this hard to do. The first time she had dreamed of Mick’s death, she hadn’t been in love with him, she hadn’t even known him. Now, she could barely bring herself to write down anything about her dream, but she knew she had to do it.

After she had written down every detail she could recall, Sophie set her quill back down on the bedside table and recapped the bottle of ink. She knew any attempt to go back to sleep now was futile, and she put on her carpet slippers, picked up her lamp, and left her room again.

She went downstairs, but as she turned to walk down the hall toward her conservatory, she saw Mick standing in the doorway of that room, and she stopped walking. He had his back to her, he held a lamp in his hand, and he was wearing nothing but that pair of worn gray flannel trousers.

Noticing the light of her lamp, he turned around and saw her standing there. He smiled, and she almost ran straight into his arms, but something held her back, a feeling she couldn’t quite define, a feeling that
made her walk slowly down the hall to where he stood at the door.

“Hullo,” he greeted her in a low voice. “Wandering around in the middle of the night again, are you?”

“What are you doing down here?” she whispered back. “You were in bed, fast asleep.”

“I was, until a beautiful ghost in a long white nightgown appeared at my door and shone a lamp in my face.”

“Sorry. I just—”

She stopped, lowering her gaze to the wall of his bare chest, wanting more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life to lean against the hard strength of his body, to feel safe in his arms. She wanted him to kiss her, and make love to her, and drive the demons away. She looked up into his face. “I had a dream about your funeral,” she whispered.

She saw his mouth tighten, and he lifted his hand to touch her cheek. “Sophie, my luv, I’m not going to have a funeral until I’m at least eighty-seven.”

His love
.

She wasn’t. She knew that.

Pulling back from his touch, she stepped around him and entered the conservatory. He followed her as she wove through the trees and rare plants to the tea table. Setting down the lamp, she reached for the teakettle, then looked at him. “Would you like a cup?”

“No.”

There was something in his eyes that she knew and understood, because it was what she wanted. Just the
thought of lovemaking with him made her body feel warm and soft, pliant and willing. He set his lamp on the floor, then took a step toward her.

She was a woman he desired, the way he had desired many women before. Though she had finally convinced him of her psychic ability, she knew he couldn’t accept it enough to live with it. Like Charles, like most people, Mick wanted his private thoughts to remain private. He could not love a woman who was so odd, so different, so invasive.
Like rape
.

She took a step back, shaking her head. “No,” she said. “No.”

He didn’t reply. He just took another step forward, bringing him to within a hand’s breadth of her. She took another step back, and her hips hit the oak table behind her. Mick reached around her and removed her lamp from the table. He walked away to set her lamp on the floor beside his own, and she drew a sigh of relief at the space he had put between them.

But her relief was short-lived. He returned to stand in front of her, and his eyes still had that look of desire. He bent his head to kiss her.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said, turning away to avoid his kiss as she flattened her palms against his chest. His skin was warm beneath her hands.

“Probably not,” he agreed and pressed his lips to one corner of hers. He slid one hand into her hair to turn her face toward him. Tilting his head, he kissed the opposite corner of her mouth. “But let’s do it anyway.”

“Stop it,” she whispered. “What if someone comes in?”

“At one o’clock in the morning?” His lips brushed over hers. “I doubt it.”

“I can’t,” she said, frantic now, stiffening in his hold, resisting him with everything she had. “Not here. We’re in the conservatory of my aunt’s house, for heaven’s sake.”

Undeterred, he continued to kiss her, his mouth coaxing her to respond. But she brought her arms up protectively between them and remained stiff and unyielding. “Sophie,” he murmured, and began to brush his tongue back and forth across the plump curve of her lower lip as he slid one arm around her waist. He ran his fingers lazily up and down her spine and nibbled on her lip until slowly, very slowly, some of the rigidity left her body and her lips parted beneath his persuasion.

“Sophie, Sophie,” he coaxed against her mouth, “kiss me back.”

She couldn’t withstand this tender persuasion any longer. With a moan, she slid her arms around his neck and pressed closer to him instead of pulling away, her body molding to his as she surrendered. His hungry body responded instantly to the move, and he deepened the kiss, slanting his mouth over hers and sliding his tongue between her teeth to taste her.

She met him halfway, her tongue touched his, and lust surged through his bloodstream like wildfire. His hand left her hair and slid between them. He began unfastening her nightgown, his knuckles brushing against her breasts as he slipped the pearl buttons out of their holes. He stopped at her waist and pulled the
edges of the gown apart to kiss her exposed throat, tasting her scented skin, “You want this as much as I do. I can feel it.”

He was right. She did want this, but she also knew she wanted more than this, and he couldn’t give her more. She broke the kiss and turned her face away, “We can’t do this.”

Undeterred, he pressed tiny kisses along the column of her throat to her collarbone. “Aye, we can. No one has to know.”

“Mick, listen to me.” She pushed at him, but it was a halfhearted effort, and he ignored it.

“I don’t want to listen to you,” he countered, his lips warm against her skin. “Because you’ll try to talk both of us out of it.”

She began to quiver in his hold, and she could feel her resistance slipping away. He seemed to feel it, too. He moved his hands to her waist, grasped the edges of her nightgown in his fists, and pulled the soft lawn fabric apart. The pearl buttons from her waist to her feet easily slipped free of their holes. Before she could assimilate what was happening, his hands spanned her waist, and she felt herself lifted up onto the table.

He wants me now
, she thought, closing her eyes and desperately trying to hang on to her resolve and her pride as he slid his hands up her torso to caress her breasts.
He doesn’t want me forever
.

She opened her mouth to tell him again to stop, but instead, she heard herself making small gasping sounds that didn’t sound anything like a refusal. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from tilting her head back in a yielding arch.

He pressed his advantage, lowering his head to her breast, licking her. She shivered as his tongue circled her nipple again and again, as he brought his hand up to cup her other breast. She couldn’t seem to stop her own arms from coming up to cradle his head as he teased and toyed with her breasts.

Slowly, he kissed his way up her body, his hands still caressing her breasts. “Sophie,” he murmured against her ear as he brushed his thumbs back and forth across her nipples. “Unbutton my trousers.”

“I won’t,” she gasped in one last valiant attempt to fight what they both wanted.

“Then I will,” He continued to caress the taut tip of one breast as he undid his trousers with his free hand. She heard the rustle of fabric as his trousers slid down his hips. She felt herself being pushed backward until her shoulder blades met the hard surface of the table. She felt the heaviness of his body as he moved on top of her, and she no longer had the will to fight him. She couldn’t. She did want him. She loved him. She parted her legs, willing now, eager to have him inside her.

But he didn’t enter her. He remained still, poised above her, hard against her, waiting. “Open your eyes and look at me,” he said.

She did, and his face seemed to fill the whole world.

“If you really want me to stop,” he said unsteadily, “then say it. Now. Look me in the eye and tell me to stop.”

She couldn’t, and he knew it. She knew it, too.

Sophie wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face down to hers for a long, hungry kiss.

Her capitulation seemed to ignite something inside
him. He slid his hands beneath her buttocks and lifted her as she wrapped her legs around his waist. He entered her, one hard push bringing him fully inside her. She buried her face against his shoulder as he thrust into her again and again, and she savored the feel of him as the muscles deep within her own body tightened around him in quick pulsations that brought her to that dizzying peak of sensation. She cried out, her senses exploding in a white-hot flash that sent waves of almost unbearable pleasure through her body as he surged into her one last time and was still.

Sophie kept her eyes closed. She could not look at him. Not now, not at this moment. If she did, she’d come apart. She had to harden herself against him. Now. If she didn’t, he’d tear her heart apart when he left.

Mick frowned, feeling her body stiffen beneath him when only moments before she had been soft and yielding. Now, she kept her eyes tightly shut, and she was biting her lip as if she were in pain.

“Sophie?”

The sound of her name seemed to spark something inside her, but it wasn’t the sort of spark a man wanted. She pushed at his chest. “Mick, let me up.”

The table was wide enough for him to roll to his side, and she was off the table the moment he did so. Turning her back to him, she began to refasten the buttons of her nightgown.

He watched her for a moment, completely at sea. First she didn’t want him, then she did, then she didn’t.

He eased off the table, pulled up his trousers, and buttoned them, still watching her. Five minutes ago,
she had burned like fire in his hands, now she was a glacier. She had enjoyed their lovemaking as much as he had. Why the coldness now?

This reading his thoughts and sensing his feelings was more than invasive. It was damned frustrating. It-gave her a power and control over every situation that he could not match, it enabled her to always have an advantage over him. He enjoyed a woman who was strong-minded and strong-willed, but if an argument was in the works, he sure as hell wanted an even playing field on which to have it. With Sophie, that was impossible.